Rebirth Part 17

Would she be able to tell? Would it be obvious? Cass thought it probably would-everyone had become connoisseurs of death since the Siege. At first it was just the fever; one learned that when the sheen evaporated and the flush deepened, when the skin went from rosy to grayish-crimson, that the coughing was close behind and the final hours of demented mumbling were imminent.

Later, when the streets were empty except for Beaters, when there were no hospitals and doctors had no tools or medications to practice with, they learned about other kinds of death. In the library, Cass had watched a man die in anguish from a burst appendix; his writhing grew so terrible that Bobby had finally put the man over his strong shoulders and taken him outside the gates; when he returned alone no one asked questions. Later a pregnant woman arrived, carried by two men; her labor had begun in the house where they'd been squatting, and when she failed to deliver in the first twenty-four hours they brought her to the shelter; she was almost unconscious when she arrived; the men's coats were slick with her blood, and she died after only a few weak cries, sodden with more blood than Cass had ever seen, even after all this time.

During the riots people were trampled and beaten, and Cass saw blood on the streets whenever she went out. A human body, crushed and dragged, could leave a stain far greater than you'd ever imagine. Was that what had happened to Smoke? Had his blood been spread across the cracked concrete of a road, or the dried thatch of kaysev in a field?

Her need to see him spurred her along and she followed Ralston outside into the cold air. He wrapped an arm around her before they'd gone three steps, and she caught the odor of his breath, stale and faintly tinged with chewing tobacco.

"You must be cold."

Cass laughed. "Not really, not now."

"What are you really after? I can get you some pop bottle crank. Maybe hollies. I can't get you into the medical supplies, though, honey, not even with this." He held up his wrist; even in the moonlight, augmented by the occasional spotlight at the entrances to campus buildings, she could make out the black smudge.

"I'm not...that's not what I want," she said.

"Yeah? Don't tell me you really do have a headache, darlin', cause that's gonna cut into our fun." He laughed at his own attempt at humor. "That's what you had in mind, right? A little fun? Listen, I can get us into a party, a few people I know. Real discreet. They know how to-"

"I need to get in the basement of the Tapp Clinic," Cass interrupted, slipping her hand into his waistband. "Where the prisoners are. I need to see one of them. That's what I really want. I'm willing to...show my appreciation."

"Hold on a minute." Ralston stopped, gripped her arm hard above the elbow. They were behind the building, in between a couple of aluminum storage sheds sided by sharp-branched dead bushes. Above, the moon emerged from blowing wisps of clouds and glinted off his hungry eyes. "Are you out of your fucking mind? If there's a detail summons while we're over there, how'm I gonna know? I can't miss again-"

"Your friend can come get you," Cass said silkily. "He could be there in two minutes. He'll do it, if you tell him to. Nothing's going to happen in two minutes."

"But the basement's guarded."

"Where we just were is guarded." Cass knew she needed to play this just right, and she made her voice go lower. This was the trick-blow out most of your breath, speak on the dregs. A whisper with a promise. "Look, I just need to see my friend for a minute. Nothing illegal, I promise. Just to make sure it's really him in there, okay? You can make that happen for me, right?"

"Not unless I cash in every chip I've got. Do you know how many-"

Cass stepped in closer and reached down, her fingers finding him and squeezing before he knew what was happening. A vulnerability they never thought of until too late.

He was hard already, harder instantly beneath her hand. Good. She traced a fingernail along the taut fabric of his pants, and leaned in to whisper in his ear. She darted her tongue out as she spoke so that it just brushed lightly against the inside of his ear, and he moaned before she got the first three words out. "I know what I'm doing."

He seized her hips and ground against her, backing her up against the shed. The metal was shockingly cold even through her coat.

"Show me."

"I can do things you'll remember," she said, for the moment letting him crouch and buck against her. Distaste eddied in her mind, but she focused on Smoke, on the reason she was here, and made herself go outside herself, let herself drift up until she was outside of her body, looking down. From that vantage point, somewhere in the thin winter night, drifting above the unlovely blocky sheds, the dead landscaping, she saw Ralston hump and heave, and considered something that she hadn't thought about in a long time: Sex was ridiculous, nothing more than homely rutting. The expression of the basest of instincts, twitching and spasming, hormones unleashed and sloshing through the body's systems. A cock, a cunt-God's joke, a jigsaw puzzle simple enough that even the dumbest beasts could figure it out. The lengths that people went to to organize and ornament it... Every species, the males mounting and holding fast with claws and paws and flippers and, when those failed, with teeth-blood and pain and yowling and violence were just part of the process. The system was gamed against the females, who fought and cried out as they were fucked and impregnated and then left to stagger off to dens and warrens and shitty apartments, bruised and savaged, reminded of the terrible imbalance of nature's arrangement.

That other, that lovely, that desperately beautiful thing, it had been a lie, a fantasy. A trick of her imagination, a leftover illusion from some fairy-tale place she'd gone to escape the horrors of her adolescence. No matter that it had seemed real with Smoke.

"Slow down, cowboy," she whispered against his neck. "You're going to get there too quick. Let me take you there nice and slow."

"Aw, shit," he moaned, but he did what she commanded, going still, shuddering against her. "Are you a pro?"

The words didn't carry the sting they might once have. Hell, maybe she had been, sort of, though it wasn't money that changed hands back then. Cass had traded in desperation and forgetting. And she had given good value, at least on those occasions when she didn't pass out.

No danger of passing out tonight.

"I'm just really good at what I do," she whispered. Then she lifted one foot to the other shed, pressed her boot against the side-then the other. The sheds were far enough apart that she had to arch her back to wrap her legs around his waist, but she knew that the move had its appeal, for some, anyway. She held the position, undulating slowly against him, her muscles straining and her arms quivering with the effort. Long enough. Just long enough. "Let me give you a taste now. Then take me where I want to go, and we'll come back and finish."

Ralston could barely contain his excitement. He seized her ass and squeezed, and she knew it was an effort for him not to plunge against her again. "Go down on me now," he panted. "Then later I take you however I want."

"Yeah," Cass moaned, feigning anticipation. "I want to suck you now. I want to swallow your cock-"

"Up the ass," he interrupted, and she knew he wasn't even hearing her; she was indifferent, it made no difference to her. "If I want. Whatever I want. You got to do whatever I want."

"You take me to see him and I will." Cass cupped him in her hand and squeezed, hard enough to get his attention. "If you don't, I'll never give you a second look. I'll go back and do your friend and he'll tell you all about it. You hear me?"

"God, no," Ralston moaned, planting his face in her shoulder and raising his hands in supplication. "I'll get you there. I'll get you in, I swear. Whatever you want. I just need to tell King where we're going."

That was all she needed to hear. Cass lowered her feet to the floor and slid down to her knees, the metal cold against her back.

29.

A DIFFERENT GUARD IN THE BASEMENT NOW, just one for the overnight shift-a muscular, short fiftyish man with a tight build and a hole where his front teeth used to be, a scar twisting his lip. He either wasn't afraid to fight or had been in one that had been stacked against him. Either way, it was something to worry about.

He was reading a magazine-on the cover was a celebrity chef Cass remembered from the magazines she stocked in the QuikGo, had a restaurant in New York or New Orleans or somewhere that pretty people used to go. Cass hung back in the shadows as Ralston said a few quiet words to the man. He called him Jimbo and grabbed his own crotch, and motioned for her to step forward. Jimbo looked her over, up and down, not even trying to hide his interest. Cass wondered if she'd have to do him, too.

It didn't much matter. Ten minutes on the ground didn't mean much to her right now other than a few scrapes on her knee, a crick in her back. The way her lips got numb and swollen from her teeth. Nothing. Less than nothing.

She was about to see Smoke. She craned her neck, looking down the hall, which darkened to inky black at the end. The guards had a single lamp between them, a bulb in a socket tied to a pipe, the way that was so common nowadays. No shade, so you could get away with low wattage. The CFL bulbs were probably good for a few more years, anyway, and that was a longer horizon than anyone was worried about these days.

"Who is he to you, anyway?" Jimbo demanded, taking a toothpick from a shirt pocket and going to work on his yellowed teeth. "Boyfriend?"

"None of your business," Cass muttered. But the notion seemed to occur to Ralston for the first time, and he hitched himself up a little taller. Great. Perfect time for dick-measuring.

"Well, come on, let's see if he's croaked yet."

Down between the cots, Jimbo leading, Ralston behind him. A powerful stench rose from a figure huddled on a blanket on one of the cots they passed, urine and vomit that no one had bothered to clean. Cass wondered what Jimbo had done to deserve this rotation.

When they were close to the end of the row, Cass rushed ahead, past the man she'd just pleasured and the one with the cruel eyes, unheedful of the risk, of the imbalance of power. There. The last cot, covered like all the others in a dark, rough blanket, a figure bent and flung, silent in sleep or death.

Smoke Suddenly the thought of him burst through her like every flavor she'd ever tasted, every sunrise that ever blinded her eyes, every pain that ever touched her nerves. A memory- Smoke as he turned away, Smoke moments before he left her to seek the sort of justice she didn't believe in. His eyes were blue, October skies and buttonweed, shaded with sadness. His hands work-rough and strong, clenched at his side. His mouth...his mouth that she had kissed a thousand times, full and sensuous, tensed now with rage.

He'd been ready to die, she knew that, and she had hated him for it, for wanting revenge more than he wanted her. Only that knowledge had kept her from running after him, for sinking to her knees outside the gate and wailing for him to return to her.

Instead she had hardened herself against him. She was not an ordinary woman, she had not lived through ordinary trials and she did not have ordinary strength on which to draw. She had been hurt so often that she was more scar than flesh, and when Smoke left her Cass had carved flint-edged fury from the shards of her devastation. It was not a comfortable thing to bear, but she'd done what she had to, followed Dor in the opposite direction from where Smoke had gone. Now she understood that she would have chosen death herself if it hadn't been for Ruthie, and so she'd taken this path, a man who could keep her child safe, a chance to burn herself out bright if that was to be.

Only now she was inches away from Smoke, who she never thought she would see again, and the furious heart of hers disintegrated and the jagged pieces were made dust and everything was gone but him. And her longing for him. And she gasped from the shock of it and knelt down next to the cot.

There was no smell of death, no smell of rot, but still the air was tainted with the cold metal scent of blood. Cass tried to say his name but nothing came to her lips; her throat was dry. She lowered her hands to the mattress, crushed the cheap fabric of the blanket in her hands and pulled it gently away, and lowered her face to his chest. If he was dead-but no, through the filthy blood-matted fabric of his shirt she felt the warmth of him, and he shifted and moaned and she felt his chest vibrate with the effort to speak.

And she was crying. Just like that, hot tears streaming silently from her eyes. Behind her the two men began arguing, but she blocked them out and focused on Smoke alone. She found his face with her hands and gasped to feel the scabbed flesh, the jagged uncleaned wounds and she jerked her hands away.

"Shine the light on him," she demanded, croak-voiced, and someone put a boot to the side of the bed and gave it a vicious shove, causing Smoke to cry out in pain.

"Fucker took out Calder and Boone." Jimbo's voice was cold and hard.

"Boone's dead?" Ralston sounded shocked. "I didn't even know he was on that detail."

"Yeah, him and Calder and Zhao and Lorenzo, Lorenzo just got promoted to Detail Five, this was his first recruiting trip."

Cass remembered the name Calder-one of the guards who'd taken over the library when she and Smoke got there. He'd been a prematurely gray man who spoke little but had a habit of touching the handle of his blade every few minutes. Had he burned the school? She supposed he must have; Smoke would not have executed him otherwise.

"They say he shot Calder in both knees and elbows with his own gun," Jimbo went on, as though reading her thoughts. "Told him he was going to keep going until he'd used up every Rebuilder bullet they had. Calder choked to death on his own blood while he was begging for one to the brain to finish him off. Death in a warm bed is too good for this one."

"No shit," Ralston said, but he clicked his penlight on and shone it on the bed, no doubt curious about a man who could go up against four men and kill two of them before they got him.

Cass was not prepared for the sight of Smoke-he looked even worse than he had hours earlier, when Mary's scrutiny prevented her from looking too close. Now she could see that his nose was broken, his eyes blackened and swollen shut. His lips-his beautiful mouth-were split and bloodied, black crusted blood on his chin.

His head rolled back and he tried to raise his one arm, but it lay at a wrong angle and only twitched before falling back. Broken. The other arm, the one with the ruined fingers, was bound in dirty rags; blood had soaked through the knotted fabric and Cass saw that flies were settling and swarming around it. She realized the flies were the source of the buzzing that she'd thought was only in her head.

"Zhao got 'im," Jimbo muttered. "Pretended he was down and when this asshole was done with Boone he went to drag the body-he'd already got Calder stowed, don't know what he was fixin' to do with 'em-anyway he holstered up and Zhao shot him clean through the shoulder. Missed the bone and came out the other side. Lorenzo was trying to get off a shot but he'd been lying on his gun hand, it'd gone numb, is what he said."

Ralston made a grunt of disbelief. "Lorenzo's a douche. He just made a shitty shot, is all."

"Yeah, maybe. But he's the douche who brought Smoke back here along with Calder and Boone's bodies."

"You proud of your boy?" Ralston demanded, crouching down next to Cass and nudging her shoulder. "Proud of him torturing an unarmed man?"

Cass said nothing, focused on Smoke. As gently as she could she pried his eye open, saw that the eyeball was rolled up in his head. Whatever sounds he made were from deep within his semiconscious state, but that didn't stop her from trying.

"I'm here," she whispered, and bent to kiss his cracked and torn mouth. She tasted his blood, felt her tears splash on his wounds.

"That's foul," Ralston said. "Don't put your mouth on that, not when you owe me the next hour. I don't want none a his nasty."

They didn't know, and Cass forgave that comment even as her fingers traced lightly on his shirt, looking for the wound, the bullet's exit. They didn't know what Smoke had been avenging. They'd heard only one account, riddled with inaccuracies and outright lies. They didn't know that the Rebuilders Smoke killed had lined up the residents of the library, shot the older men one by one before moving on to every resident who dared to object. She remembered Nora, her nervous quick movements, her badly cut hair, the way it fell around her face, making her gaunt cheekbones look somehow elegant. Her sad black-brown eyes.

And Sammi's mother, the first and only time Cass ever saw her, when she dragged Sammi in from the fields to the safety of the school shelter. The way Jessica had fallen to her knees when she saw that her daughter was safe, the wildness in her expression that spoke of frantic worry.

The two women had been ordinary. A mother, an aunt, but they had stood up to the Rebuilders and for that they had been executed, their bodies draped in a heap in the center of the school, left to burn and burn and burn.

Cass doubted the story Jimbo told, that Smoke had continued shooting a downed man, but thinking about the fire, she realized that perhaps she would have done the same if she had been there.

She found the torn place in the shirt, slipped a finger through the hole and searched for the wound in Smoke's shoulder. His skin was impossibly hot; infection must have set in. There. It was a jagged hole, but not too large.

Why couldn't it be Smoke who had her immunity? Cass supposed that if she was the one shot, her body would immediately start healing. It happened with cuts, even deep ones. There would be no infection, and the severed nerves and vessels would eventually knit back together. But not Smoke. He was nothing special at all. He had never been a soldier, never worn a uniform, had only learned to sharpshoot, to run with a heavy pack and scale obstacles and make strategy on the fly when he started working for Dor.

Had Dor taught him brutality, too? She'd seen Smoke, on the mornings she followed him, her jacket's hood pulled up all the way for warmth. She'd watched him practice the chopping fist motions that Joe taught him for hand-to-hand fighting; watched him run up and down the steps of an apartment building until he was drenched in sweat, his calves trembling and his lungs fighting for air. Smoke had worked so hard to make himself dangerous. Was it all for this? All so that he could fight against an enemy so powerful that it barely flinched before replacing its fallen?

Would Smoke's actions mean anything at all? Death was cheap; the world would not miss a few more men in the prime of their lives.

"When did he get here?" Cass asked.

"Two nights ago," Jimbo said. "The recruiting party spent the night up at Emerson Gap, they were heading up to Silverton. There's a group up at the old MegaBass Pro Shops, that big one they built back in like '14 or '15, something like that...bought a wakeboard there once." He spat off into the darkness, spittle falling on Cass's exposed neck. "Don't know how this asshole knew to look for them there, but he was waiting. He was up in a tree the whole time, waited until they made camp and rushed them after dark."

Dor. Dor had told Smoke where to look. Three nights ago when Smoke left on the motorcycle Dor gave him, armed with weapons from Dor's private arsenal, Dor had told him exactly where he could find the Rebuilder party.

Was that why Dor let him go so easy? Why he tried to put Cass's fears to rest? Was it because he really believed Smoke had a chance? Or because he didn't want her running after him? Cass's anger at Dor grew; it was one man against at least four. The element of surprise was good, that was true; without it, Smoke would not have been able to take out even the two he did. But how could Dor have expected him to win? All the target practice in the world, all the jogging and weights couldn't prepare him for his first actual battle, and he'd gone in alone.

"Why?" she whispered, lowering herself as gently as she could against Smoke's body. He had slipped back into unconsciousness, and she felt only his weak heartbeat in response. Why had he thought he could do this? But she already knew the answer-he'd never intended to live; he only meant to take out as many of them as he could before he died.

Would he be satisfied now to know that he'd killed two? It didn't seem like much of a trade for one's own life.

She forced herself to stand, letting her hand linger on Smoke's unhurt shoulder for a moment. She faced Jimbo and hugged herself in the cold.

"I need you to make him live," she said quietly. "Medicine, antibiotics, whatever you have. I'll do anything for you. Anything."

Ralston sputtered a protest, something about the next hour, and she placed a hand on his arm to quiet him. "I remember our bargain," she said steadily, before turning her focus back to Jimbo. He was watching her carefully, his wiry gray eyebrows knit together.

"I'm an outlier," she said, waiting to make sure he understood. "I'll have certain privileges. Freedoms. I'll be able to come and go...to come to you. As long as you keep him alive, you can have..."

She shrugged off her coat, letting it hang at her elbows, and for the second time that night she strained against the thin fabric of the nightgown, hoping the light from his small flashlight would illuminate the shape of her breasts, of her taut stomach, her hips. She cupped one breast, lifting it for his appraisal. "You can have anything you want," she finished, and then she couldn't help looking to reassure herself that Smoke was still unconscious, because even though she could give herself away, could give away every last cell of her body, every wracked corner of her soul, he could never know. This would be her gift to him: he would never know that his life was what she bought with her trade.

"You'd like that," Ralston said, and for one confusing moment Cass mistook his tone for jealousy, for anger that she was so quick to offer what she'd just given him, down on her knees on the cold ground, but when he seized her wrist and twisted it so that she had to bend double, Cass realized that she had made two important misjudgments: First, she'd forgotten that-just like in the Box-the most important positions were given to those who'd done the security jobs Before: the cops and Marines and highway patrol, the prison guards and gangbangers. The hard men.

And second, that even a man who thrusts against you with the strangled cry of an adolescent, who shudders as he spills his seed inside you, unmindful of his momentary vulnerability, his shaft already going soft between your teeth, will forget all that when he believes he's been wronged.

"You can see your murderer boyfriend all you want in detention-if he lives that long," Ralston spat.

"I never stood against the Rebuilders," Cass protested, but already they were leading her down the hall, forcing her to go too quickly, so that she stumbled and nearly fell, her arms yanked cruelly as they pulled her along, and when they passed the staircase and continued into a little room, a closet where brooms and supplies were stored, Cass knew with horrifying certainty that they meant to deliver her their version of justice-and that she'd brought it on herself.

But she'd done worse. And she'd no doubt do worse again.

30.

DOR RUBBED THE METAL BOX, RUNNING HIS thumb over the smooth silvery surface, before slipping it back in his pocket. He sat on the edge of the bed Cass had left. Ruthie, sensing his closeness in her sleep, had rolled closer to him and hooked her small hand over his leg.

Ruthie was an odd child in some ways, cautious and easily spooked, but at times Dor caught glimpses of the mischievous spirit hidden within her. Subdued, maybe, but not quashed. At times it seemed that even Cass could not detect the sly little grin that flashed across Ruthie's pretty features when she had played some tiny trick for her own amusement, some clever gesture just because she could. A mother, tasked with protecting her child from birth, exhausted from the dangers and heartaches, could easily miss such moments.

Not long ago, Dor had come across Ruthie in the Box with Feo, playing a game they'd invented that involved Feo standing on a gentle berm where Cass had planted pine seedlings. The boy stood patiently, whistling. The object of the game seemed to be for him to pretend he was all alone and for Ruthie to try to sneak up on him. There was something desperately sweet about the boy-tough and disrespectful to most adults, his face generally wary and mistrustful-whistling with his hands in his pockets until Ruthie, over and over, came charging at him from behind the little trees, slamming her little body into him, and every time he acted as though she had taken him completely by surprise and fell to the ground. They rolled together, Feo yelling in pretend terror, Ruthie shaking with her soundless laughter, until she disentangled herself and went running off to hide again.

Chapter end